Title:New Advances of CRISPR/Cas9 Technique and its Application in Disease Treatment and Medicinal Plants Research
Volume: 23
Issue: 14
Author(s): He-Fang Wan, Wen-Jing Han, Lei Zhou, Shuo Wang and Chun Sui*
Affiliation:
- Institute of Medicinal Plant Development (IMPLAD), Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences & Peking Union Medical
College (Key Laboratory of Bioactive Substances and Resources Utilization of Chinese Herbal Medicine, Ministry of
Education & National Engineering Laboratory for Breeding of Endangered Medicinal Materials), Beijing 100193,
China
Keywords:
CRISPR/Cas9, disease treatment, medicinal plants, gene editing, off-target effect, sgRNA.
Abstract:
Background: Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats (CRISPR)/Cas9
technology is widely used in disease treatment and medicinal plant improvements due to its advantages,
such as easy operation, low time consumption, and high efficiency. However, potential
off-target risks still exist in practical applications and need to be solved urgently.
Objectives: This study aimed to review the application progress of CRISPR/Cas9 technology in the
field of disease treatment and medicinal agriculture in recent years. Furthermore, the study discusses
the ways to reduce the off-target effect of CRISPR/Cas9 technology, providing a reference for the
further application of this technology.
Methods: CiteSpace software was used to analyze relevant literature data from 2013 to August 2021,
and search results were retrieved from Web of Science, PubMed, and CNKI databases.
Results: In the field of disease treatment, CRISPR/Cas9 technology has great potential to cure challenging
human diseases and has been widely used in drug target development, drug design, and
screening. In crop breeding, CRISPR/Cas9 accelerates the improvement of crop varieties and shortens
the number of years of crop breeding. By adjusting the length and GC content of sgRNA and
changing the concentration of Cas9/sgRNA complex to reduce the off-target effect of CRISPR/Cas9
technology, the target genes can be manipulated more accurately.
Conclusion: CRISPR/Cas9 technology is an indispensable and key technology in the field of disease
treatment and medicinal plants. With the in-depth study of the off-target effect, CRISPR/Cas9 technology
can have broader application prospects in the fields of medicine and medicinal agriculture.